Chapter 3 - Blood on the Marble
In the blackness, sound became a weapon.
To me, the sudden darkness was blinding, terrifying. But to Vincent, it was a waking nightmare of sensory overload.
I heard him draw a sharp, agonizing breath as his newly awakened ears tried to process the darkness. The click-clack of the rain against the skylights above sounded like a firing squad. The low drone of the backup generators failing in the basement was a guttural growl.
"Vincent," I whispered, reaching out blindly until my fingertips brushed the cold, waterproof nylon of the tactical vest he had just slipped over his shoulders.
His hand immediately caught mine. His grip was steady now, warm despite the blood slicking his collar. He pulled me gently but firmly behind him, moving with the eerie grace of a predator who had memorized every square inch of this room in the dark.
From down the long marble hallway outside the study, a sound carried through the air.
*Pfft. Pfft.*
Suppressed gunshots.
Followed by the dull, wet thud of a body hitting the floor.
Vincent’s shoulders went rigid. He didn't need to ask who it was. The perimeter guards—his loyalists—were being systematically eliminated by men who had entered from the inside. Men who had the security bypass codes. Dominic’s men.
Vincent leaned down until his lips were pressed against my temple. "Down," he breathed into my ear.
I sank to the floor behind the heavy mahogany desk, pulling my knees to my chest. The mahogany was four inches of solid African timber; it was built to stop bullets.
Vincent didn't hide. He stepped to the left of the doorway, blending into the shadows beside an ancient marble bust of Marcus Aurelius. He held the Sig Sauer in a low, two-handed grip, the barrel pointed at the floor at a forty-five-degree angle.
Footsteps approached.
Two men. Moving in a tactical stack. Rubber-soled combat boots squeaking faintly against the polished floorboards.
"Check the study," a low, gravelly voice muttered. "Don gave the order. If the freak survived the disconnection, put two in his skull and bag the girl. She’s seen the hardware."
The hair on my arms stood up. They weren't here to negotiate. They were cleaning house.
A beam of bright, focused tactical light sliced through the open doorway of the study, illuminating the swirling dust motes and the broken crystal on the rug.
The first gunman stepped through the threshold, his rifle raised to his eye-line.
He never saw Vincent.
Vincent moved without a whisper of displaced air. His left hand shot out like an iron vise, clamping over the gunman's mouth and throat, dragging his head backward while his right hand brought the butt of the Sig Sauer down with catastrophic force onto the man’s cervical spine.
*Crack.*
The sound was sharp, sickening. The gunman went instantly limp, his rifle slipping from dead fingers.
Before the second man in the hallway could process the fall of his partner, Vincent stepped over the body and fired twice.
*Pfft. Pfft.*
The suppressed rounds were shockingly quiet, but in the confined hallway, they sounded like heavy books being slammed onto a desk. The second man collapsed backward, his tactical light rolling across the marble, spinning until its beam came to rest on the face of the dead man.
It was Marco. One of Dominic’s personal bodyguards. A man who had eaten dinner at the estate's staff table just three nights ago.
Vincent stared down at the dead men, his chest heaving. Blood was still dripping from his ear, staining his collar, but his gray eyes were colder than the ice on Lake Michigan.
He bent down, stripped the tactical harness from the first shooter, took three spare magazines, and picked up the dead man’s customized short-barreled submachine gun.
He turned back to the study and whistled—a low, flat note.
I peeked over the rim of the desk.
"Come," he mouthed, extending his hand into the light.
I didn't hesitate. I ran to him, my bare feet slipping slightly on the wet floor where the rain was blowing in through a shattered window down the corridor. I took his hand. It was steady, warm, and entirely grounding.
"Where are we going?" I whispered.
"Basement," he said, the word coming out clearer this time, though still rough, like a blade being dragged across an oily whetstone. "Tunnels."
"Vincent, your ear..."
He shook his head once, cutting me off. He raised two fingers to his right ear, then pointed down the hall. He was telling me that despite the pain, he was using it. The hearing, as fractured and overwhelmed as it was, was giving him something he hadn't had in fifteen years: early warning.
We moved down the grand staircase.
The estate was a house of ghosts. Every shadow hid an executioner. The smell of gun smoke—acrid, metallic, sulfurous—drifted up from the ground floor, mixing with the scent of rain.
Halfway down the stairs, Vincent suddenly shoved me flat against the carpeted steps, throwing his entire body over mine.
*RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!*
A burst of automatic gunfire tore through the grand staircase from the mezzanine above. Plaster exploded from the walls in blinding clouds of white dust. The priceless oil paintings flanking the stairs were shredded into ribbons of canvas.
Vincent didn't flinch. He rolled onto his back, raised the submachine gun with one arm, and fired a controlled, four-round burst into the shadows of the upper balustrade.
A scream echoed through the vaulted foyer, followed by the heavy, tumbling crash of a body crashing through the balusters and landing with a sickening crunch on the marble floor twenty feet below.
Vincent was up instantly. He pulled me to my feet, his arm wrapping around my waist, physically lifting me over the splintered debris of the staircase.
"Move!" he barked.
We hit the ground floor and sprinted toward the kitchen.
The kitchen was dark, lit only by the emergency lights of the industrial refrigerators. The smell of freshly baked bread from that afternoon still hung in the air—a surreal, heartbreaking reminder of the quiet life I had tried to build within these terrifying walls.
Suddenly, the kitchen doors swung open with a violent kick.
Three men in black tactical gear burst into the room.
Vincent shoved me behind the massive stainless-steel prep island just as the room erupted into thunderous, deafening violence.
The gunfire inside the enclosed kitchen was absolute madness. Pots, pans, and ceramic dishes exploded into shrapnel. The copper hoods above the stoves were peppered with dozens of high-caliber holes.
Vincent fired until his submachine gun clicked empty. Without pausing, he dropped the weapon, drew the Sig Sauer from his hip, and leaned around the steel counter, firing three precise shots.
Two men went down, clutching their chests.
The third man—a hulking mercenary with a scarred neck—lunged forward, tackling Vincent around the waist before he could acquire a target.
The two men crashed into the stainless-steel refrigerator, the metal crumpling under their combined weight. Vincent’s gun went skittering across the tile floor, sliding under the stove.
The mercenary was younger, heavier, and completely fresh. He drove a gloved knee into Vincent’s injured right ear.
Vincent let out a sound that didn't sound human. A roar of pure, agonizing torment that seemed to come from the deepest pit of his soul. His hands flew to his head, his vision blurring, the sensory shock threatening to shut his brain down completely.
The attacker pulled a combat knife from his chest rig, raising the six-inch serrated blade high above Vincent’s throat.
"Consigliere sends his regards, Don Moretti," the man snarled.
My mind went entirely blank.
I didn't think about survival. I didn't think about my father, or Tyler, or the fifty dollars. I only saw the man who had left notes asking if my bed was comfortable, the man who had let me sleep behind a locked door, the man who had looked at me like I was a human being instead of a piece of meat.
I lunged from behind the island, grabbed a heavy, twelve-inch cast-iron skillet from the drying rack, and swung it with both hands, putting every ounce of my weight, my rage, and my twenty-three years of misery into the blow.
*CLANG!*
The iron struck the side of the mercenary’s skull with the force of a car accident.
The man’s head snapped sideways. His eyes rolled back into his head, the knife slipped from his fingers, and he collapsed sideways onto the floor like a sack of wet concrete, completely unconscious.
I stood there in the dark, chest heaving, holding the bloody skillet, my knuckles bone-white.
Vincent lay against the dented refrigerator, panting, staring up at me through the shadows.
A slow, bloody grin spread across his face—the first real smile I had ever seen on the Don of Chicago.
May you like
"Good... wife," he wheezed, his broken voice filled with a savage, dark pride. "Very... good wife."
***
